Everyday Creative, Creative Every Day

November is Art Every Day Month!

Welcome to the general info page for the Art Every Day Month Challenge!

About:

I started this project over ten years ago as a challenge to myself to create some art every day for one month. 2018 is the 17th year!! I was inspired by Nanowrimo and wanted to do something similar with art, and thus Art Every Day Month(AEDM) was born. Posting art on my blog every day helped to keep me accountable and it was fun to share my creations. The following year, I invited people to join in and each year since I've had great groups of creative people committing themselves to more creativity for the month of November with me. I've met some fantabulous people through AEDM and I'm thrilled to have anyone who is interested join in!

The rules (which were made for breaking):

I keep the rules for AEDM really simple and very loose. I encourage people to make something every day, but my goal is to foster more creativity, so if you make just one piece of art per week or just one for the whole month, that's fine with me. The idea is to bring more creativity into your life, not to make you feel overwhelmed, pressured or guilt-stricken. Art is also loosely defined here. I mean art in the sense of anything creative, whether that be painting, drawing, knitting, sewing, cooking, decorating, writing, photography, clay, jewelry-making or whatever!

Look at AEDM as a soft nudge to add more creativity to your everyday life with a bit of group support. It's the group support that makes it so lovely I think. Every year, I meet new, wonderfully creative people through the process, which was an unexpected, but amazing benefit! Because my focus is on mixed media art, I tend to work on drawing, painting, and collage and I challenge myself complete a piece of art or do some work on a larger piece every day and post an image of what I'm working on on my blog.

I keep a list of folks participating, so that you can check in on what others are up to and I'll have post on November 1st where people can leave a comment with a link to their blog posts. I've also created a Facebook group as alternative places to share. If you share your images on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, use the hashtag #arteverydaymonth2018.

You can join in any time during the month. So if you find this and November 1st has passed, don't worry, you can still participate!

How to participate:

The most basic way to participate is to sign up either with a link or just leaving your name in the comments. This can be your way of committing to creativity for the month.

Other optional ways of participating: You can share your creations on your own blog (simply posting about what you're up to), you can post images on instagram or Twitter using the hashtag #arteverydaymonth2018, you can share what you're up to in the Facebook group, you can post in the comments on the blog (creativeeveryday.com) to share a link to a specific image or post, or if you don't have something to link to, you can use the comments section as a place to share a bit about what you're creating.

If you use Twitter, you can tag your tweets with #arteverydaymonth2018 to connect with others doing the challenge. You can use the same hashtag if you use Instagram or Facebook.

I think it's helpful (and fun) to share your creations, even if it feels a little scary at first, but it's not required, so do what feels best for you!

Take some time to stop in and visit some of the other bloggers who are participating (see the sign up post) and help cheer them on. You're bound to meet some inspiring people in the process!

If you have any questions or concerns, don't hesitate to ask me.

Quick notes: in order to use the AEDM button located in the sidebar (and above), simply right-click on the image and save it to your computer. Different blogging applications have different ways of adding images to your blog, but all have help sections which should be able to direct you to instructions on how to do it.

If you use typepad, I wrote a quickie tutorial for posting blog buttons for a different group here, here's a tutorial from another blogspot blogger on adding a picture to your sidebar, and here's a page on adding images to a wordpress.com blog.

I've created two new AEDM buttons (below). Feel free to use any of the 3!

About Me: My name is Leah Piken Kolidas and I'm an artist living near Boston with my husband and 2 children. I do my best to inspire with the art I make and share on my art website here and my blog, Creative Every Day. Every November I lead a project called Art Every Day Month (see above.) Along the same lines, I also lead a year-long project called the Creative Every Day Challenge which you can read about here.

Be an Everyday Creative, Be Creative Every Day! And Happy Creating!

About CED – Leah

Welcome! Pull up a cozy chair.

My name is Leah Piken Kolidas and my intention for this blog is to share my artwork, thoughts on living a creative life, and what is inspiring me (so much!).